The original name is not known, and it was only called Porta Pinciana in the 4th century due to the vicinity of Mons Pincius. The gate was also referred to as Porta Salaria Vetus, because the Via Salaria passed through here, then as Belisaria, after the Byzantine general Belisarius who repulsed the attack of Vitiges, king of the Goths, in 537, and, again, as the porciniana, portiniana or turata.
In 275 Aurelian built a postern straddling a secondary road: slightly oblique to the course of the walls, the gate had an irregular-shaped brick tower probably just one storey high. Modest restoration work was carried out by Maxentius, and it was with Honorius that the gate acquired its monumental dimensions in 403. A wider travertine archway was built, surmounted by a roofed gallery with a chamber housing the mechanism for raising and lowering the portcullis. In the event of danger, the wooden door wings were closed, and a portcullis was lowered along “tracks” in the travertine. An open, battlemented walkway was also built for the watch. Other additions were a secondary, inner gate and another tower, slightly smaller than the previous one. The postern thus became one of the strategic points of the whole circuit and was besieged on several occasions.
In times of peace the local traffic was divided between Porta Pinciana and the nearby Porta Salaria. A document dating to 1467 attests to the custom of “renting out” the city gates to private investors, who were given the right to charge tolls and made healthy profits from the passage of people and goods. In 1474 a count named Stefano Maccaroni was awarded both Porta Pinciana and Porta Salaria in a single lot for “79 florins and 10 bolognini” (customs register for 1474, held in the Vatican Archive, document XXXVII, published by S. Malatesta in Statuti delle gabelle di Roma, Rome 1886).
In the 18th century the towers were still standing up to the second storey, but the structure was so precarious and dilapidated that the top sections were knocked down for safety reasons around 1821 and cladding was added to the lower part of the east tower, further reinforced in the time of Pius IX. To facilitate the flow of traffic, sections of the ancient wall were sacrificed between 1908 and 1935 to make way for the current vehicle access points.
2. Porta Pinciana, middle of the 18th century, print.
3. The walled-up Porta Pinciana, exterior elevation, second half of the 19th century.
4. Porta Pinciana, interior elevation, first decades of the 20th century.
5. Porta Pinciana, interior elevation, 1966.
6.Porta Pinciana, exterior elevation, detail, 1966.
7. Porta Pinciana, exterior.